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Our Correspondent
Diphu, Sep. 8 (EMN): The Border Tribal Welfare Society (BTWS) of Karbi Anglong has refuted allegations by the Sadou Axom Ekotrita Yuva Parishad (SAEYP) that it has sold tracts of Daldali Reserve Forest along the Assam-Nagaland border inside Karbi Anglong.
Addressing a press conference in Karbi Anglong on Tuesday, the society’s president, Leon Engleng, said that it was ‘unfortunate’ the SAEYP has ‘falsely accused’ the BTWS of selling land inside the reserved forest to ‘Nagas of Nagaland’.
“In yesterday’s press conference held at Guwahati, SAEYP has blamed the BTWS of selling land to the Nagas of Nagaland through the support of chief executive member of Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council (KAAC), Tuliram Ronghang. The SAEYP has taken our organisation name wrongly; they mentioned it as ‘Border Welfare Peace Committee.’ But actually, in the border area there is no such peace committee. Ours is Border Tribal Welfare Society. We have formed the society with the purpose of building up a cordial relationship among different tribes and communities living there, and secondly for protection of border land. We have no such intention of selling land to the Nagas and we don’t have that authority as well,” Engleng said.
“We condemn (them) for propagating such false and baseless allegations without knowing the ground reality,” Engleng added.
According to him, the Forest department of KAAC, under West division, is taking up the border road construction after proper demarcation.
“In the 2000 hectares of barren land inside Daldali Reserve Forest, the Forest department will be taking up massive plantations to re-create forest cover. We are only extending our support to the Forest department in border protection. The border road from AK Market, Lahorijan to Rangapahar is 13 km and 80% of road construction work is completed.
“The Forest department is re-claiming the border road constructed in 1964. Notably, at that time Dimapur town was actually not part of Nagaland, but the Assam government has given the area on lease for railway junction by extracting some parts of Golaghat, Sibsagar and Karbi Anglong,” Engleng said. The general secretary of All Assam Students’ Union (AASU), Karbi Anglong district committee, Shorjun Hanse, said the allegations against BTWS were ‘without any proof and baseless’.